[open-archaeology] Making excavation data available to the public

[Jonathan Gray]

We'd also be delighted to talk to you about open data licensing
options if that would be helpful!

See, e.g.:

  http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
  http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ
  http://www.opendefinition.org/guide/data/

All the best,

Jonathan

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 7:23 PM, Anthony Beck <ant.beck at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Peigi,
>
> Your e-mail has me grinning like a loon. The statement “<insert name here>
> would like to make our excavation data available to the public” is something
> I would like to hear more regularly.
>
> Unfortunately I’m not in a position to offer advice on the three options
> you’ve suggested: although, whichever you choose will in part be influenced
> by your internal recording system, reporting procedures and analytical
> framework.
>
> That said, from reading your message I don’t think that that is what you
> want to do: I get the impression you want to provide a way in which you can
> easily produce visualizations of your excavation data that are suitable for
> public consumption. I assume this would be spatial and attribute groupings,
> and interpretations, suited to different audience members with different
> archaeological experience and technical backgrounds.  If this is what you
> want I wholeheartedly agree with your outlook (however, dynamic public
> participation in this way may be difficult).
>
> I would also suggest that you might need different systems for different
> phases of your programme. During traditional excavation, data entry and
> analysis you may want to keep your data in one of the three systems you
> mention. Once you have published your report then you may want to openly
> publish your data as well. In that case I would recommend you map your
> schema and instances to the English Heritage extension of the CiDOC ontology
> (this has already been partially done for IADB in the STAR project) and
> produce triples which can be freely stored in a number of different
> solutions (Freebase or Talis Commons for example). This would provide a data
> resource that can be utilised freely, has an explicit schema and instance
> data and can be inferenced over by a machine. This would provide a much
> richer data set for subsequent re-analysis and visualization than any
> information deposited within the NMR.
>
> Alternatively you can produce a triple based recording system from which you
> can automatically generate a range of different visualisations and groupings
> and provide a framework through which the community can validate and
> interpret the data dynamically: however, I fear that may be quite a large
> task :-)
>
> Best and please keep us informed on your progress
>
> Ant
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 5:30 PM, Peigi Mackillop <PMackillop at nts.org.uk>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I am a newbie here so I hope this is the correct forum to ask my question.
>>
>> The National Trust for Scotland would like to make our excavation data
>> available to the public, beginning with a small, forthcoming project, and I
>> am looking into various open source options. All our data will, of course,
>> hopefully, go into the NMR but we would like a fast-track solution to show
>> the public what we are doing, as they pay for us :-)
>>
>> Our IT department is quite small and therefore we would prefer a solution
>> that does not require much configuration or "nursing". I have been looking
>> at three options, ARK (http://ark.lparchaeology.com/), IAD
>> (http://www.iadb.org.uk) and Nabonidus http://www.nabonidus.org/. The last
>> option is a hosted web front-end which bypasses the need to install software
>> on a web server and seems fine for what we hope to achieve. Does anyone have
>> experience of using these, and are they really the correct tool to
>> communicate with our audience (who will also be professional archaeologists
>> as well as interested members of the public).
>>
>> Many thanks, and best wishes
>>
>> Peigi (Peggy)
>>
>> Peigi MacKillop
>> Archaeology Volunteer
>> The National Trust for Scotland
>> 28 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, EH2 4ET
>> pmackillop at nts.org.uk
>>
>> The National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest and
>> Natural Beauty is a charity registered in Scotland, Charity Number SC
>> 007410----------
>>
>> The National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest or Natural
>> Beauty is a charity registered in Scotland, Charity Number SC007410
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
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